Your body is designed with muscles that oppose each other. It’s how the body stabilizes itself. Your chest muscles in the front of your body oppose your back muscles. This is how the shoulders are stabilized. The exercises also make the most of your time by letting you stretch your body as you strengthen it. Conveniently, when you do a pushing motion, like a chest press or a push-up, to strengthen the chest, you actually stretch the muscles in the back at the same time. Try it for yourself right where you are. Using both arms, imagine that you’re pushing open a very heavy door. In addition to feeling your chest muscles contract, you can probably also feel a stretch taking place across your back. Everything you’ll do in my program is designed to stretch as it strengthens. But the most important thing is that these have to be exercises you can actually do. Here’s one of the biggest mistakes people make in the gym. They see an article in a magazine that tells them to stand on a stability ball and do one-handed shoulder presses with their eyes closed. Sure, the article was written for elite, world-class circus performers, but people figure that since they’ve been going to the gym for almost a month, they can handle it, but the truth is, they can’t.The exercises you’ll do in a well planned program gradually ramp up in difficulty. As you progress through the weeks, you’ll be given more challenging things to do. I start you off simply because you have to walk before you can run. (And you will literally be walking before you run, but more about that in the cardio chapter.) Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security, however, if some of the initial exercises seem easy. I’m no pushover. You will be challenged. And don’t worry if there’s an exercise that you can’t do or have trouble with. The exercise section of my book is divided by body part, so simply substitute another exercise that works the same body part for the exercise you have trouble with. Can’t seem to do the Hollywood Arrows? No problem. Just substitute some Hollywood Butt Kicks in their place.
The ever-increasing number of exercises that you’ll learn also serves another purpose: they’ll keep your body, and you, from getting bored. If you’ve ever joined a gym and been given an initial consultation where someone hands you a list of eight or ten exercises to do, you know what I mean. You stick with the routine for a couple of weeks, and you might even see some changes happening to your body, but then what happens? Your body stops changing, and you get discouraged. In addition to that, you’re bored with doing the same things over and over again. So what happens? You stop exercising.
Achieving fitness means that your body must adapt to new movements and situations. If you stick with the same handful of exercises, your body will stop responding. By constantly hitting you with new exercises and having you do some of the older exercises in different orders, I keep your body constantly on its toes, in a state of shock and surprise. You never hit plateaus where your body stops changing, and you never get bored with doing the same workout again and again.
